eXistenZ is a David Cronenberg film that combines Body Horror with Mind Screw. When you allow the Platonic Cave to mess with your emotional and mental state, how do you know who your friends really are? How do you know right from wrong, and whether you believe it... or just your character? What is real?

It is described by some as the Canadian version of The Matrix, but it involves more philosophy and less leather-clad ass-kicking.

This film provides example of:

Abnormal Ammo: One of the weapons featured in the movie is a bone gun that fires human teeth—using chunks of jawbone as cartridges.

Bodyguard Crush: Very subtly, the use of this trope is one of the first clues that the movie started inside a game.

Brain–Computer Interface: There are biological computers which interface with you through plugging a very phallic tentacle into a port in the base of your spine. The movie plays this for all it's worth, even having characters lick the ports of other characters during sex scenes.

But Thou Must: Lampshaded a few times, where the characters play a virtual reality game.

During the dinner scene where Pikul finds a bone gun in his dish.

"Pikul, what are you doing?

"I don't know. I find this disgusting but I can't help myself."

"Good."

"Good? You think this is good?"

"Yeah. It's a genuine game urge. It's something your character was born to do. Don't fight it."

"Our characters are obviously supposed to jump on each other. It's probably a pathetically mechanical attempt to heighten the emotional tension of the next game sequence. No use fighting it."

Coitus Ensues: Lampshaded. The two main characters suddenly start making out for no apparent reason. Allegra tells Pikul to just go with it, as it's just a scene written into the program in order to increase the emotional intensity between them. At the end it's revealed that the two were actually in a relationship to begin with, although that might have been a cover story. And they might still be in the game.

Deep-Immersion Gaming: The virtual reality game has so many layers that the characters are never quite sure if they're back in reality or not.

Are we still in the game?!

Dialogue Tree: Made to look as awkward as they actually would in real life. Until you give a correct response, game characters just repeat the same fidgety actions. Rather than selecting the response text from a menu, player characters just "know" what the right options are.

Disobey This Message: Played much more intelligently than most applications of this trope, in a sort of Brechtian sense. The final scene of the movie essentially acknowledges that the whole thing is a work of fiction, and not objective truth. The real point of the film, much like Videodrome, is that we shouldn't blindly accept any messages.

The organic game pods are strangely phallic, and plug into a port on a person's lower back. After said ports are lubricated with saliva. The pods then must be touched like controllers, and the way the characters do this looks oddly erotic.

Also, the whole theme of people fanatically trying to murder an artist is deliberately evocative of the life of Salman Rushdie, who is friends with Cronenberg. It's quite likely that the character of Allegra Geller ( and later, Yevgeny Nourish) is a stand-in for Rushdie. The word "fatwa" is even used explicitly.

Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. After Pikul assembles a new Gristle Gun from his Alien Lunch, he jokingly points the weapon at Allegra and repeats the line used by an assassin who previously tried to kill her. She's not amused, and he apologizes.

Hollywood Game Design: The film depicts Allegra Geller as the world's premiere game designer of the eponymous game. Aside from egregious playing straight of No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup, none of her associates even seem to have the slightest idea what eXistenZ is actually about. Justified, as none of the people playing transCendenZ are professional game designers.

Inside a Computer System: The film centers around a virtual reality gaming system that people entered, and in some cases you couldn't tell whether they were in a game or in reality.

Living Battery: The biological game device runs on the energy of the user, since it plugs directly into a "bioport" (sort of an extra anus artificially installed in the lower back). It's suggested that all gaming devices operate the same way.

Mind Screw: The film is Philip K Dick-like in the mind screw department. It features a VR game within a VR game within a VR game within a VR game, the characters openly question whether they're still in the game at every level (and for bonus points, compare real-life to VR), switch sides multiple times, and reference things that happened at other levels.

New Media Are Evil: There's a whole cult which regards eXistenZ, a new virtual reality gaming platform made from Organic Technology, as evil incarnate and its inventor Allegra Gellar as a demoness who must be killed to prevent the game's dissemination. After it's revealed that most of the movie was itself a virtual game called tranCendenZ, it turns out that the two protagonists were members of such a group, with their emotions seeping into the plotline of the game.

Allegra comments that Robert Silverman's Irish accent is not very convincing, and that he's a generally bland character. This is in contrast to the excitable nutjobs he usuallyplays in Cronenberg's films.

More obviously, you can hear Jude Law's accent crack when he shouts. It's very obvious. But... just wait until the end of the movie.

Post Cyber Punk: One of the major undercurrents of the film is that although the game world is unreal, bizarre, and often gross (much like horror films) it's not really dangerous to anyone in the real world, and censoring it is a bad idea. The real danger is ideological extremism.

Prelap: When the scene jumps from the forced make-out to Trout Farm, breathy make-out sounds continue as a dead amphibian dangles from Pikul's hand.

Recursive Reality: This is the central point of the film - the protagonists are confused about how many levels of virtual reality Game Within A Game there are, and what they're supposed to do to win. And in the end, they still aren't sure if they're still in the game or not.

Scaramanga Special: The pistol made of bones from the Chinese Restaurant meal, which happened to literally be the Special of the Day.

Schrödinger's Butterfly: How many levels of this virtual reality are there? And how do you know when you're in real life?

Serious Business: Darkly parodied. People are willing to kill each other over a video game. But, as Cronenberg's friend Salman Rushdie could tell you, that's not so far off from the truth...

Shocking Swerve: invoked In the climax, the male protagonist is suddenly revealed as another secret agent who was sent to kill his female partner all along, even though this contradicts most of what's been shown of the character. It's soon revealed to be part of another layer of the VR game, and the programmed plot twists (extracted from the players' minds) were becoming increasingly random.

Strangely Arousing: the two main characters are in an advanced form of video game where their characters suddenly feel aroused and start making out; at first they are confused, but quickly figure out that the game's script calls for their characters to start a love affair, so they just go with it to advance the plot, all the while talking on a meta-level about the significance of the whole thing and their situation.

This Is Reality: Inverted in the movie, which has several 'nested' realities thanks to people playing a virtual reality game that uses all of one's senses. Hence, the characters might be playing the game, then in the game start playing the game, then in that game start playing the game to further something in the 'earlier' level of the game. When finally all the strangeness 'resolves' in The Reveal, the shock causes one minor character to comment, "Wait, we're still in the game, right?" So maybe this is not reality.

Win to Exit: Almost all of the film actually takes place in a virtual reality gameworld with assassins stalking the main characters. It's only after the heroine exposes her partner as an operative who was sent to kill her all along and kills him instead that the game slowly unravels and she wakes up for real.

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